"Cloisonné Plaque with Mount Fuji" is designated as an Important Cultural Property by the Japanese government.

The Cleveland Museum of Art boasts a renowned collection of Japanese art, largely containing works from the centuries ago.

A just-opened exhibition at CMA offers something different. “Remaking Tradition: Modern Art of Japan From the Tokyo National Museum” does, as the name suggests, showcase art from that major Japanese institution. And it is art from a more recent period — a very important period — when Japanese artist were given more freedom to create and were heavily but not completely influenced by Western artists.

“What makes (the exhibition) particularly great is the fact that although the Cleveland Museum of Art opened the building in 1916, all of the works of art in its Japanese art collection really predate that time period,” says Sinéad Vilbar, curator of Japanese and Korean art at CMA. “And during the (tenure of Director Sherman Lee, an expert on Asian art) the institution was collecting very important works from the 15th through 17th centuries and on into the 18th century.

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“But this collection,” she continues, referring to the new exhibition, “represents works of art that were being produced from about the 1860s to 1938, and so it encompasses a period of Japanese art that although was occurring during the Cleveland Museum of Art’s formative state that isn’t really represented in our collection.

A stroll through the exhibition, housed in the museum’s Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall, during a media preview on Feb. 14 revealed a number of eye-consuming pieces large and small in a variety of media.

That aspect also makes the show special, Vilbar says.

“Although there have been in recent years some exhibitions that touch on aspects on modern Japan … those exhibitions have really tended to focus only on prints or only on paintings,” she says. “To have an exhibition that brings together ceramics, textile, sculpture and painting in both Western and Japanese style is really a first.”

Some of the 55 masterpieces that catch the eye:

-- “Aiming at the Target,” 1890, by Soyama Sachihiko. Considered the artist’s first major work, it is a realistic portrait of a samurai kneeling and about to fire an arrow from his bow. According to the placard that accompanies the work, it “recreates the occasion in 1885 when master archer Togo Shigemochi exhibited his skills in the presence of Emperor Meiji. It serves both as a record of the gala archery exhibition and as an attempt to preserve in pictorial form the art of archery, which was being lost in the course of modernization.”

-- “Footed Bowl With Applied Crabs and Brown Glaze,” 1881, by Miyagawa Kozan I. The elaborate ceramic work with colored glazes has a large crab crawling up the side of the vessel, just about reaching the top. It is said to be representative of the personality of the artist, who made ceramics with his father. It is one of six pieces in the show designated by the Japanese government as an Important Cultural Property. Those pieces can be exhibited overseas but not sold.

-- “Poems,” 1918, by Kusakabe Meikaku. The work is a large pair of six folded screens — one of several screen works in the show, which could have been used as furniture in homes — featuring a poem about 12 Chinese calligraphy masters. The work is signed, “Written by Meikaku at age eighty-one.”

-- “Maiko Girl,” 1893, by Kuroda Seiki. The striking oil painting is from the highly respected artist who had just returned from France and was visiting Kyoto for the first time, according to a catalogue for the show. The model was a maiko, an apprentice geisha, of the Onotei House in the city’s Gion district, “a world that Kuroda found exotic.” His use of bright colors even in dark areas of the work became known as “purple style,” a major influence on Japan’s Western-influenced artists.

Asked to name a favorite piece or two, Vilbar cited the two works by Matsubayashi Keigetsu, “Chomon Gorge” (1929) and “Spring Colors Along the Mountain Stream” (1935). The former is a very tall ink painting, while the latter is a pair of six-fold color silk screens, both capturing nature scenes.

“What I find particularly compelling about it is it’s work that demonstrates an artist who is active at a point when he has fully digested this huge social and visual upheaval and is producing art in a style known as Nanga, or literati painting, which is largely Chinese-derived,” she says. “But he puts this amazing spin on it where he is using Western techniques as well, Western drawing techniques, and combines them to great effect.”

Perhaps the most famous piece in the show is the oil painting “Portrait of Reiko,” a 1921 work by Kishida Ryusei and one of the Important Cultural Properties.

“‘Portrait of Reiko’ is one of the most well-known Japanese art pieces,” says Saeko Yamamoto, communications manager at the museum. “Every single Japanese person knows it — no exceptions.

“I can’t believe we have ‘Reiko’ in the United States!”

In a conversation with Matsushima Masato, curator of Japanese painting and senior manager of special exhibitions at Tokyo National Museum in which Yamamoto served as a translator, he says that the painting — a seemingly simple portrait of the artist’s daughter — was influenced by Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” Not surprisingly then, the longer you gaze upon Reiko’s expression, the more complex, the more mysterious it becomes.

“This was one of the first paintings in which artists expressed personality in painting,” Yamamoto says after conferring with Masato. “Before that, all of the paintings, art, were assigned by someone.

“For that reason, this is a special piece in Japanese art history.”

At the same time as this exhibition, several pieces of the Cleveland museum’s Japanese art collection are being shown at the Tokyo institution.

“We’re told at least one day there were 4,000 people in the exhibition in Tokyo,” Vilbar says. “Many of the works in the Cleveland collection of Japanese art come from, as I said, a medieval to early pre-modern period and are really prized in Japan, so it’s a really important homecoming even for those works of art.”

“Remaking Tradition: Modern Art of Japan From the Tokyo National Museum” run through May 11. Admission is $20 and will include entry into the soon-to-open “Van Gogh Repetitions.” It is free for museum members. For information, call 216-421-7350 or visit www.ClevelandArt.org.

About the Author

Mark is a lifelong Northeast Ohioan and an Ohio University grad. Along with loving music, movies and television, he is crazy about sports and tech. Reach the author at mmeszoros@news-herald.com
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